One type of container used for food products includes a carton enclosing both a pouch containing a food product and a loose, solid, flowable food product, such as dried pasta. One method of packaging involves inserting the pouch into the carton first and then subsequently depositing the flowable food product into the carton to at least partially fill the carton.
One issue that can result from this sequence is that before the flowable food product is deposited into the carton, the pouch shifts, falls, or otherwise ends up in a position where it lies across an interior of the carton with a bottom end abutting one sidewall at a bottom corner of the carton and a top end of the pouch abutting an opposite side wall at a location spaced from a bottom wall of the carton. If the pouch is of sufficient size, this positioning can at least partially block off a bottom corner region of the carton. This can disadvantageously prevent the flowable food product from flowing into the corner region. If a sufficient volume is blocked by the pouch, the carton can overfill with the flowable food product, which may result in the flowable food product spilling onto the floor or otherwise wasting the flowable food product, as well as creating additional work to clean up the overfilled product that did not go into the carton. Simply increasing the size of the carton is not a desirable solution, as providing excess headspace in the carton to accommodate for the inaccessible volume of the corner region can increase packaging costs. Yet another problem can arise when quality control standards require that the improperly filled container be rejected, which wastes the food products and the packaging for the container and the pouch. Another problem is that a carton having a blocked corner region can have a different center of gravity than cartons where the pouch is largely against only one of the sidewalls, which can result in a less stable carton. This lesser stability can be exacerbated when the carton has a height that is greater than the width and/or depth of the base.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,634, a packaging machine can tip a box being filling with a light and fluffy particulate product to provide a vent for air, which can otherwise become entrapped by the particulate product. This allows the product to roll down the inclined side of the box, rather than fall in a straight drop. This process, however, does not address the problems presented by combining a pouch and a flowable food product in a container.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,608,808 discloses utilizing a horizontal conveyor and a flat guiding plate to pack flexible bags into a container which is held at an angle. This disclosure, however, is limited to products contained within the flexible bags. U.S. Pat. No. 5,855,105 discloses utilizing a horizontal conveyor to deposit pouches into a container held at an angle in a continuous process. The container is moved so that a next empty space of the container is aligned with the subsequent pouch. These patents describe methods to fully pack a container with bags or pouches and do not address the problems presented by filling the containers with a flowable food product alongside the bags or pouches.